Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete

We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over surrounding graves.

We went into a Jewish synagogue, – the interior cased in marbles, and surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church; but it was dirty, and had an odor not of sanctity.

In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home.

We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold much conversation.

The evening was beautiful, with a bright young moonlight, not yet sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the stars, and as we walked the deck, Miss M – showed the children the constellations, and told their names. J – made a slight mistake as to one of them, pointing it out to me as "O'Brien's belt!"

Elba was presently in view, and we might have seen many other interesting points, had it not been for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning we found ourselves in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, and, going ashore with our luggage, went through a blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife and I strayed a little through Civita Vecchia, and found its streets narrow, like clefts in a rock (which seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to send us to Rome in a carriage, with four horses, in eight hours; and as soon as the custom-house and passport people would let us, we started, lumbering slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had heard rumors of robberies lately committed on this route; especially of a Nova Scotia bishop, who was detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly pillaged; and certainly there was not a single mile of the dreary and desolate country over which we passed, where we might not have been robbed and murdered with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, or a barn, but did not look very much like either, being strongly built of stone, with iron-grated windows, and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by the seashore a great part of the way, and stopped to feed our horses at a village, the wretched street of which stands close along the shore of the Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity. The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he must have known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered on through cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth, – reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where we could gain admittance, and where we have been half frozen ever since.

And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome!

Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, February 3d. – We have been in Rome a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain, and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered during two or three days; meanwhile seeking lodgings among the sunless, dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day after another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coat over all. In the middle of the day I generally venture out for an hour or two, but have only once been warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the sun never at any time. I understand now the force of that story of Diogenes when he asked the Conqueror, as the only favor he could do him, to stand out of his sunshine, there being such a difference in these Southern climes of Europe between sun and shade. If my wits had not been too much congealed, and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept a minute journal of my feelings and impressions during the past fortnight. It would have shown modern Rome in an aspect in which it has never yet been depicted. But I have now grown somewhat acclimated, and the first freshness of my discomfort has worn off, so that I shall never be able to express how I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in it; and soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, and perhaps reconcile me to Rome against my will. Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly, mean-looking whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most uncomfortable to the feet, enormous prices for poor living; beggars, pickpockets, ancient temples and broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about them; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every degree; a shabby population, smoking bad cigars, – these would have been some of the points of my description. Of course there are better and truer things to be said…

It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of these famous sites and edifices, – St. Peter's, for example, – which have been described by a thousand people, though none of them have ever given me an idea of what sort of place Rome is…

The Coliseum was very much what I had preconceived it, though I was not prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit on the verge of the open space… The French soldiers, who keep guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, have an excellent opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls.

February 7th. – I cannot get fairly into the current of my journal since we arrived, and already I perceive that the nice peculiarities of Roman life are passing from my notice before I have recorded them. It is a very great pity. During the past week I have plodded daily, for an hour or two, through the narrow, stony streets, that look worse than the worst backside lanes of any other city; indescribably ugly and disagreeable they are… without sidewalks, but provided with a line of larger square stones, set crosswise to each other, along which there is somewhat less uneasy walking… Ever and anon, even in the meanest streets, – though, generally speaking, one can hardly be called meaner than another, – we pass a palace, extending far along the narrow way on a line with the other houses, but distinguished by its architectural windows, iron-barred on the basement story, and by its portal arch, through which we have glimpses, sometimes of a dirty court-yard, or perhaps of a clean, ornamented one, with trees, a colonnade, a fountain, and a statue in the vista; though, more likely, it resembles the entrance to a stable, and may, perhaps, really be one. The lower regions of palaces come to strange uses in Rome… In the basement story of the Barberini Palace a regiment of French soldiers (or soldiers of some kind [we find them to be retainers of the Barberini family, not French]) seems to be quartered, while no doubt princes have magnificent domiciles above. Be it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates climb through rubbish often to the comforts, such as they may be, that await them above. I vainly try to get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness, shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is also to be said that you cannot go far in any direction without coming to a piazza, which is sometimes little more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy street, with the lofty facade of a church or basilica on one side, and a fountain in the centre, where the water squirts out of some fantastic piece of sculpture into a great stone basin. These fountains are often of immense size and most elaborate design…

There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, constructed under the orders of one pope or another, in all parts of the city; and only the very simplest, such as a jet springing from a broad marble or porphyry vase, and falling back into it again, are really ornamental. If an antiquary were to accompany me through the streets, no doubt he would point out ten thousand interesting objects that I now pass over unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and whitewash; but often I can see fragments of antiquity built into the walls, or perhaps a church that was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous stones that were laid above twenty centuries ago. It is strange how our ideas of what antiquity is become altered here in Rome; the sixteenth century, in which many of the churches and fountains seem to have been built or re-edified, seems close at hand, even like our own days; a thousand years, or the days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and scarcely interests us; and nothing is really venerable of a more recent epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an account of one of the public buildings of that city, – a relic of "the olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for their gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so much older remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England…

Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in its decay than even it was in its primal strength. If we ever build such noble structures as these Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins, after two thousand years, in the United States; but we never can have a Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. The Corso, and perhaps some other streets, does not deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed on the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso is narrow, not averaging more than nine paces, if so much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace after palace stands along almost its whole extent, – not, however, that they make such architectural show on the street as palaces should. The enclosed courts were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which the founders cared to enrich architecturally. I think Linlithgow Palace, of which I saw the ruins during my last tour in Scotland, was built, by an architect who had studied these Roman palaces. There was never any idea of domestic comfort, or of what we include in the name of home, at all implicated in such structures, they being generally built by wifeless and childless churchmen for the display of pictures and statuary in galleries and long suites of rooms.

I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of Rome. I have been four or five times to St. Peter's, and always with pleasure, because there is such a delightful, summerlike warmth the moment we pass beneath the heavy, padded leather curtains that protect the entrances. It is almost impossible not to believe that this genial temperature is the result of furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last summer, which will be included within those massive walls, and in that vast immensity of space, till, six months hence, this winter's chill will just have made its way thither. It would be an excellent plan for a valetudinarian to lodge during the winter in St. Peter's, perhaps establishing his household in one of the papal tombs. I become, I think, more sensible of the size of St. Peter's, but am as yet far from being overwhelmed by it. It is not, as one expects, so big as all out of doors, nor is its dome so immense as that of the firmament. It looked queer, however, the other day, to see a little ragged boy, the very least of human things, going round and kneeling at shrine after shrine, and a group of children standing on tiptoe to reach the vase of holy water…

On coming out of St. Peter's at my last visit, I saw a great sheet of ice around the fountain on the right hand, and some little Romans awkwardly sliding on it. I, too, took a slide, just for the sake of doing what I never thought to do in Rome. This inclement weather, I should suppose, must make the whole city very miserable; for the native Romans, I am told, never keep any fire, except for culinary purposes, even in the severest winter. They flee from their cheerless houses into the open air, and bring their firesides along with them in the shape of small earthen vases, or pipkins, with a handle by which they carry them up and down the streets, and so warm at least their hands with the lighted charcoal. I have had glimpses through open doorways into interiors, and saw them as dismal as tombs. Wherever I pass my summers, let me spend my winters in a cold country.

We went yesterday to the Pantheon…

When I first came to Rome, I felt embarrassed and unwilling to pass, with my heresy, between a devotee and his saint; for they often shoot their prayers at a shrine almost quite across the church. But there seems to be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A woman begged of us in the Pantheon, and accused my wife of impiety for not giving her an alms… People of very decent appearance are often unexpectedly converted into beggars as you approach them; but in general they take a "No" at once.

February 9th. – For three or four days it has been cloudy and rainy, which is the greater pity, as this should be the gayest and merriest part of the Carnival. I go out but little, – yesterday only as far as Pakenham's and Hooker's bank in the Piazza de' Spagna, where I read Galignani and the American papers. At last, after seeing in England more of my fellow-compatriots than ever before, I really am disjoined from my country.

To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill… As the clouds still threatened rain, I deemed it my safest course to go to St. Peter's for refuge. Heavy and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world of a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it had a sunshine of its own, as well as its own temperature; and, by and by, the sunshine of the outward world came through the windows, hundreds of feet aloft, and fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement… Against a pillar, on one side of the nave, is a mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration, fitly framed within a great arch of gorgeous marble; and, no doubt, the indestructible mosaic has preserved it far more completely than the fading and darkening tints in which the artist painted it. At any rate, it seemed to me the one glorious picture that I have ever seen. The pillar nearest the great entrance, on the left of the nave, supports the monument to the Stuart family, where two winged figures, with inverted torches, stand on either side of a marble door, which is closed forever. It is an impressive monument, for you feel as if the last of the race had passed through that door.

Emerging from the church, I saw a French sergeant drilling his men in the piazza. These French soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the city, and make up more of its sight and sound than anything else that lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets. Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with the French soldiers; they are fresh, healthy, smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue coats and red trousers;.. and, at all events, they serve as an efficient police, making Rome as safe as London; whereas, without them, it would very likely be a den of banditti.

On my way home I saw a few tokens of the Carnival, which is now in full progress; though, as it was only about one o'clock, its frolics had not commenced for the day… I question whether the Romans themselves take any great interest in the Carnival. The balconies along the Corso were almost entirely taken by English and Americans, or other foreigners.

As I approached the bridge of St. Angelo, I saw several persons engaged, as I thought, in fishing in the Tiber, with very strong lines; but on drawing nearer I found that they were trying to hook up the branches, and twigs, and other drift-wood, which the recent rains might have swept into the river. There was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a knot of wood, with the lopped-off branches projecting in three or four prongs. The Tiber has always the hue of a mud-puddle; but now, after a heavy rain which has washed the clay into it, it looks like pease-soup. It is a broad and rapid stream, eddying along as if it were in haste to disgorge its impurities into the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream; on the other, where stand the Castle of St. Angelo and the Church of St. Peter, the town does not press so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey, and look as if the river had been digging them away for ages; but I believe its bed is higher than of yore.

February 10th. – I went out to-day, and, going along the Via Felice and the Via delle Quattro Fontane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I entered it, without in the least knowing what church it was, and found myself in a broad and noble nave, both very simple and very grand. There was a long row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts on each side, supporting a flat roof. There were vaulted side aisles, and, at the farther end, a bronze canopy over the high altar; and all along the length of the side aisles were shrines with pictures, sculpture, and burning lamps; the whole church, too, was lined with marble: the roof was gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, there is a chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron paling; and, being admitted into it with another party, I found it most elaborately magnificent. But one magnificence outshone another, and made itself the brightest conceivable for the moment. However, this chapel was as rich as the most precious marble could make it, in pillars and pilasters, and broad, polished slabs, covering the whole walls (except where there were splendid and glowing frescos; or where some monumental statuary or bas-relief, or mosaic picture filled up an arched niche). Its architecture was a dome, resting on four great arches; and in size it would alone have been a church. In the centre of the mosaic pavement there was a flight of steps, down which we went, and saw a group in marble, representing the nativity of Christ, which, judging by the unction with which our guide talked about it, must have been of peculiar sanctity. I hate to leave this chapel and church, without being able to say any one thing that may reflect a portion of their beauty, or of the feeling which they excite. Kneeling against many of the pillars there were persons in prayer, and I stepped softly, fearing lest my tread on the marble pavement should disturb them, – a needless precaution, however, for nobody seems to expect it, nor to be disturbed by the lack of it.

The situation of the church, I should suppose, is the loftiest in Rome: it has a fountain at one end, and a column at the other; but I did not pay particular attention to either, nor to the exterior of the church itself.

On my return, I turned aside from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinalis, and was led by it into the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. The street through which I passed was broader, cleanlier, and statelier than most streets in Rome, and bordered by palaces; and the piazza had noble edifices around it, and a fountain, an obelisk, and two nude statues in the centre. The obelisk was, as the inscription indicated, a relic of Egypt; the basin of the fountain was an immense bowl of Oriental granite, into which poured a copious flood of water, discolored by the rain; the statues were colossal, – two beautiful young men, each holding a fiery steed. On the pedestal of one was the inscription, OPUS PHIDIAE; on the other, OPUS PRAXITELIS. What a city is this, when one may stumble, by mere chance, – at a street corner, as it were, – on the works of two such sculptors! I do not know the authority on which these statues (Castor and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel inclined to take them for what they purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pontifical Palace; but, not being aware of this at the time, I did not look particularly at the edifice.

I came home by way of the Corso, which seemed a little enlivened by Carnival time; though, as it was not yet two o'clock, the fun had not begun for the day. The rain throws a dreary damper on the festivities.

February 13th. – Day before yesterday we took J – and R – in a carriage, and went to see the Carnival, by driving up and down the Corso. It was as ugly a day, as respects weather, as has befallen us since we came to Rome, – cloudy, with an indecisive wet, which finally settled into a rain; and people say that such is generally the weather in Carnival time. There is very little to be said about the spectacle. Sunshine would have improved it, no doubt; but a person must have very broad sunshine within himself to be joyous on such shallow provocation. The street, at all events, would have looked rather brilliant under a sunny sky, the balconies being hung with bright-colored draperies, which were also flung out of some of the windows… Soon I had my first experience of the Carnival in a handful of confetti, right slap in my face… Many of the ladies wore loose white dominos, and some of the gentlemen had on defensive armor of blouses; and wire masks over the face were a protection for both sexes, – not a needless one, for I received a shot in my right eye which cost me many tears. It seems to be a point of courtesy (though often disregarded by Americans and English) not to fling confetti at ladies, or at non-combatants, or quiet bystanders; and the engagements with these missiles were generally between open carriages, manned with youths, who were provided with confetti for such encounters, and with bouquets for the ladies. We had one real enemy on the Corso; for our former friend Mrs. T – was there, and as often as we passed and repassed her, she favored us with a handful of lime. Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube into our faces and over our clothes; and, in the course of the afternoon, we were hit with perhaps half a dozen sugar-plums. Possibly we may not have received our fair share of these last salutes, for J – had on a black mask, which made him look like an imp of Satan, and drew many volleys of confetti that we might otherwise have escaped. A good many bouquets were flung at our little R – , and at us generally… This was what is called masking-day, when it is the rule to wear masks in the Corso, but the great majority of people appeared without them… Two fantastic figures, with enormous heads, set round with frizzly hair, came and grinned into our carriage, and J – tore out a handful of hair (which proved to be sea-weed) from one of their heads, rather to the discomposure of the owner, who muttered his indignation in Italian… On comparing notes with J – and R – , indeed with U – too, I find that they all enjoyed the Carnival much more than I did. Only the young ought to write descriptions of such scenes. My cold criticism chills the life out of it.

February 14th. – Friday, 12th, was a sunny day, the first that we had had for some time; and my wife and I went forth to see sights as well as to make some calls that had long been due. We went first to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which I have already mentioned, and, on our return, we went to the Piazza di Monte Cavallo, and saw those admirable ancient statues of Castor and Pollux, which seem to me sons of the morning, and full of life and strength. The atmosphere, in such a length of time, has covered the marble surface of these statues with a gray rust, that envelops both the men and horses as with a garment; besides which, there are strange discolorations, such as patches of white moss on the elbows, and reddish streaks down the sides; but the glory of form overcomes all these defects of color. It is pleasant to observe how familiar some little birds are with these colossal statues, – hopping about on their heads and over their huge fists, and very likely they have nests in their ears or among their hair.

We called at the Barberini Palace, where William Story has established himself and family for the next seven years, or more, on the third piano, in apartments that afford a very fine outlook over Rome, and have the sun in them through most of the day. Mrs. S – invited us to her fancy ball, but we declined.

On the staircase ascending to their piano we saw the ancient Greek bas-relief of a lion, whence Canova is supposed to have taken the idea of his lions on the monument in St. Peter's. Afterwards we made two or three calls in the neighborhood of the Piazza de' Spagna, finding only Mr. Hamilton Fish and family, at the Hotel d'Europe, at home, and next visited the studio of Mr. C. G. Thompson, whom I knew in Boston. He has very greatly improved since those days, and, being always a man of delicate mind, and earnestly desiring excellence for its own sake, he has won himself the power of doing beautiful and elevated works. He is now meditating a series of pictures from Shakespeare's "Tempest," the sketches of one or two of which he showed us, likewise a copy of a small Madonna, by Raphael, wrought with a minute faithfulness which it makes one a better man to observe… Mr. Thompson is a true artist, and whatever his pictures have of beauty comes from very far beneath the surface; and this, I suppose, is one weighty reason why he has but moderate success. I should like his pictures for the mere color, even if they represented nothing. His studio is in the Via Sistina; and at a little distance on the other side of the same street is William Story's, where we likewise went, and found him at work on a sitting statue of Cleopatra.

William Story looks quite as vivid, in a graver way, as when I saw him last, a very young man. His perplexing variety of talents and accomplishments – he being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a musician, and a sculptor – seems now to be concentrating itself into this latter vocation, and I cannot see why he should not achieve something very good. He has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether Faust loves her; a very type of virginity and simplicity. The statue of Cleopatra, now only fourteen days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take; it is a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth and power, and working it out with adequate skill. He certainly is sensible of something deeper in his art than merely to make beautiful nudities and baptize them by classic names. By the by, he told me several queer stories of American visitors to his studio: one of them, after long inspecting Cleopatra, into which he has put all possible characteristics of her time and nation and of her own individuality, asked, "Have you baptized your statue yet?" as if the sculptor were waiting till his statue were finished before he chose the subject of it, – as, indeed, I should think many sculptors do. Another remarked of a statue of Hero, who is seeking Leander by torchlight, and in momentary expectation of finding his drowned body, "Is not the face a little sad?" Another time a whole party of Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection…

The statue of his father, his first work, is very noble, as noble and fine a portrait-statue as I ever saw. In the outer room of his studio a stone-cutter, or whatever this kind of artisan is called, was at work, transferring the statue of Hero from the plaster-cast into marble; and already, though still in some respects a block of stone, there was a wonderful degree of expression in the face. It is not quite pleasant to think that the sculptor does not really do the whole labor on his statues, but that they are all but finished to his hand by merely mechanical people. It is generally only the finishing touches that are given by his own chisel.

Yesterday, being another bright day, we went to the basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the basilica next in rank to St. Peter's, and has the precedence of it as regards certain sacred privileges. It stands on a most noble site, on the outskirts of the city, commanding a view of the Sabine and Alban hills, blue in the distance, and some of them hoary with sunny snow. The ruins of the Claudian aqueduct are close at hand. The church is connected with the Lateran palace and museum, so that the whole is one edifice; but the facade of the church distinguishes it, and is very lofty and grand, – more so, it seems to me, than that of St. Peter's. Under the portico is an old statue of Constantine, representing him as a very stout and sturdy personage. The inside of the church disappointed me, though no doubt I should have been wonderstruck had I seen it a month ago. We went into one of the chapels, which was very rich in colored marbles; and, going down a winding staircase, found ourselves among the tombs and sarcophagi of the Corsini family, and in presence of a marble Pieta very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the church we looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich and rather profusely gilded, but, as it seemed to me, not tawdry, though the white newness of the marble is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to the milder tint which time bestows on sculpture. The tombs and statues appeared like shapes and images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing which we saw in this church (and, admitting its authenticity, there can scarcely be a more interesting one anywhere) was the table at which the Last Supper was eaten. It is preserved in a corridor, on one side of the tribune or chancel, and is shown by torchlight suspended upon the wall beneath a covering of glass. Only the top of the table is shown, presenting a broad, flat surface of wood, evidently very old, and showing traces of dry-rot in one or two places. There are nails in it, and the attendant said that it had formerly been covered with bronze. As well as I can remember, it may be five or six feet square, and I suppose would accommodate twelve persons, though not if they reclined in the Roman fashion, nor if they sat as they do in Leonardo da Vinci's picture. It would be very delightful to believe in this table.

There are several other sacred relics preserved in the church; for instance, the staircase of Pilate's house up which Jesus went, and the porphyry slab on which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These, however, we did not see. There are very glowing frescos on portions of the walls; but, there being much whitewash instead of incrusted marble, it has not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to demand in Roman churches. There is a good deal of statuary along the columns of the nave, and in the monuments of the side aisles.

In reference to the interior splendor of Roman churches, I must say that I think it a pity that painted windows are exclusively a Gothic ornament; for the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts the ordinary daylight out of countenance, so that a window with only the white sunshine coming through it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian sky, looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a blotch in the rich wall. It is like the one spot in Aladdin's palace which he left for the king, his father-in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had exhausted their magnificence on the rest; and the sun, like the king, fails in the effort. It has what is called a porta santa, which we saw walled up, in front of the church, one side of the main entrance. I know not what gives it its sanctity, but it appears to be opened by the pope on a year of jubilee, once every quarter of a century.

After our return… I took R – along the Pincian Hill, and finally, after witnessing what of the Carnival could be seen in the Piazza del Popolo from that safe height, we went down into the Corso, and some little distance along it. Except for the sunshine, the scene was much the same as I have already described; perhaps fewer confetti and more bouquets. Some Americans and English are said to have been brought before the police authorities, and fined for throwing lime. It is remarkable that the jollity, such as it is, of the Carnival, does not extend an inch beyond the line of the Corso; there it flows along in a narrow stream, while in the nearest street we see nothing but the ordinary Roman gravity.

February 15th. – Yesterday was a bright day, but I did not go out till the afternoon, when I took an hour's walk along the Pincian, stopping a good while to look at the old beggar who, for many years past, has occupied one of the platforms of the flight of steps leading from the Piazza de' Spagna to the Triniti de' Monti. Hillard commemorates him in his book. He is an unlovely object, moving about on his hands and knees, principally by aid of his hands, which are fortified with a sort of wooden shoes; while his poor, wasted lower shanks stick up in the air behind him, loosely vibrating as he progresses. He is gray, old, ragged, a pitiable sight, but seems very active in his own fashion, and bestirs himself on the approach of his visitors with the alacrity of a spider when a fly touches the remote circumference of his web. While I looked down at him he received alms from three persons, one of whom was a young woman of the lower orders; the other two were gentlemen, probably either English or American. I could not quite make out the principle on which he let some people pass without molestation, while he shuffled from one end of the platform to the other to intercept an occasional individual. He is not persistent in his demands, nor, indeed, is this a usual fault among Italian beggars. A shake of the head will stop him when wriggling towards you from a distance. I fancy he reaps a pretty fair harvest, and no doubt leads as contented and as interesting a life as most people, sitting there all day on those sunny steps, looking at the world, and making his profit out of it. It must be pretty much such an occupation as fishing, in its effect upon the hopes and apprehensions; and probably he suffers no more from the many refusals he meets with than the angler does, when he sees a fish smell at his bait and swim away. One success pays for a hundred disappointments, and the game is all the better for not being entirely in his own favor.

Walking onward, I found the Pincian thronged with promenaders, as also with carriages, which drove round the verge of the gardens in an unbroken ring.

To-day has been very rainy. I went out in the forenoon, and took a sitting for my bust in one of a suite of rooms formerly occupied by Canova. It was large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet, furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculptor's studio has not the picturesque charm of that of a painter, where there is color, warmth, and cheerfulness, and where the artist continually turns towards you the glow of some picture, which is resting against the wall… I was asked not to look at the bust at the close of the sitting, and, of course, I obeyed; though I have a vague idea of a heavy-browed physiognomy, something like what I have seen in the glass, but looking strangely in that guise of clay…

It is a singular fascination that Rome exercises upon artists. There is clay elsewhere, and marble enough, and heads to model, and ideas may be made sensible objects at home as well as here. I think it is the peculiar mode of life that attracts, and its freedom from the inthralments of society, more than the artistic advantages which Rome offers; and, no doubt, though the artists care little about one another's works, yet they keep each other warm by the presence of so many of them.

The Carnival still continues, though I hardly see how it can have withstood such a damper as this rainy day. There were several people – three, I think – killed in the Corso on Saturday; some accounts say that they were run over by the horses in the race; others, that they were ridden down by the dragoons in clearing the course.

After leaving Canova's studio, I stepped into the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, in the Via di Ripetta. It was built, I believe, by Catherine de' Medici, and is under the protection of the French government, and a most shamefully dirty place of worship, the beautiful marble columns looking dingy, for the want of loving and pious care. There are many tombs and monuments of French people, both of the past and present, – artists, soldiers, priests, and others, who have died in Rome. It was so dusky within the church that I could hardly distinguish the pictures in the chapels and over the altar, nor did I know that there were any worth looking for. Nevertheless, there were frescos by Domenichino, and oil-paintings by Guido and others. I found it peculiarly touching to read the records, in Latin or French, of persons who had died in this foreign laud, though they were not my own country-people, and though I was even less akin to them than they to Italy. Still, there was a sort of relationship in the fact that neither they nor I belonged here.

February 17th. – Yesterday morning was perfectly sunny, and we went out betimes to see churches; going first to the Capuchins', close by the Piazza Barberini.

["The Marble Faun" takes up this description of the church and of the dead monk, which we really saw, just as recounted, even to the sudden stream of blood which flowed from the nostrils, as we looked at him. – ED.]

We next went to the Trinita de' Monti, which stands at the head of the steps, leading, in several flights, from the Piazza de' Spagna. It is now connected with a convent of French nuns, and when we rang at a side door, one of the sisterhood answered the summons, and admitted us into the church. This, like that of the Capuchins', had a vaulted roof over the nave, and no side aisles, but rows of chapels instead. Unlike the Capuchins', which was filthy, and really disgraceful to behold, this church was most exquisitely neat, as women alone would have thought it worth while to keep it. It is not a very splendid church, not rich in gorgeous marbles, but pleasant to be in, if it were only for the sake of its godly purity. There was only one person in the nave; a young girl, who sat perfectly still, with her face towards the altar, as long as we stayed. Between the nave and the rest of the church there is a high iron railing, and on the other side of it were two kneeling figures in black, so motionless that I at first thought them statues; but they proved to be two nuns at their devotions; and others of the sisterhood came by and by and joined them. Nuns, at least these nuns, who are French, and probably ladies of refinement, having the education of young girls in charge, are far pleasanter objects to see and think about than monks; the odor of sanctity, in the latter, not being an agreeable fragrance. But these holy sisters, with their black crape and white muslin, looked really pure and unspotted from the world.

On the iron railing above mentioned was the representation of a golden heart, pierced with arrows; for these are nuns of the Sacred Heart. In the various chapels there are several paintings in fresco, some by Daniele da Volterra; and one of them, the "Descent from the Cross," has been pronounced the third greatest picture in the world. I never should have had the slightest suspicion that it was a great picture at all, so worn and faded it looks, and so hard, so difficult to be seen, and so undelightful when one does see it.

From the Trinita we went to the Santa Maria del Popolo, a church built on a spot where Nero is said to have been buried, and which was afterwards made horrible by devilish phantoms. It now being past twelve, and all the churches closing from twelve till two, we had not time to pay much attention to the frescos, oil-pictures, and statues, by Raphael and other famous men, which are to be seen here. I remember dimly the magnificent chapel of the Chigi family, and little else, for we stayed but a short time; and went next to the sculptor's studio, where I had another sitting for my bust. After I had been moulded for about an hour, we turned homeward; but my wife concluded to hire a balcony for this last afternoon and evening of the Carnival, and she took possession of it, while I went home to send to her Miss S – and the two elder children. For my part, I took R – , and walked, by way of the Pincian, to the Piazza del Popolo, and thence along the Corso, where, by this time, the warfare of bouquets and confetti raged pretty fiercely. The sky being blue and the sun bright, the scene looked much gayer and brisker than I had before found it; and I can conceive of its being rather agreeable than otherwise, up to the age of twenty. We got several volleys of confetti. R – received a bouquet and a sugar-plum, and I a resounding hit from something that looked more like a cabbage than a flower. Little as I have enjoyed the Carnival, I think I could make quite a brilliant sketch of it, without very widely departing from truth.

February 19th. – Day before yesterday, pretty early, we went to St. Peter's, expecting to see the pope cast ashes on the heads of the cardinals, it being Ash-Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no more than the usual number of visitants and devotional people scattered through the broad interior of St. Peter's; and thence concluded that the ceremonies were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, we went out of the cathedral, through the door in the left transept, and passed round the exterior, and through the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen, – a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds, – were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts of the chapel. At last an attendant kindly showed us the proper door, and led us up flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and through halls, till at last we came to a spacious and lofty apartment adorned with frescos; this was the Sala Regia, and the antechamber to the Sistine Chapel.

The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that my wife could not be admitted to the chapel in her bonnet, and that I myself could not enter at all, for lack of a dress-coat; so my wife took off her bonnet, and, covering her head with her black lace veil, was readily let in, while I remained in the Sala Regia, with several other gentlemen, who found themselves in the same predicament as I was. There was a wonderful variety of costume to be seen and studied among the persons around me, comprising garbs that have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three centuries, – the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black velvet cloak, doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of Queen Elizabeth's time, – the papal guard, in their striped and party-colored dress as before described, looking not a little like harlequins; other soldiers in helmets and jackboots; French officers of various uniform; monks and priests; attendants in old-fashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide-awake hats and tweed overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed costume of black; so that, in any other country, the scene might have been taken for a fancy ball. By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were old men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally men of bulk and substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats, trimmed with gold-lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are identical in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn by the Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants changed the upper portions of their master's attire, and put a little cap of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel, with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the mean while, within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people, and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, not the pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black, with a red face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain.

There was nothing else to be seen; so I went back through the antechambers (which are noble halls, richly frescoed on the walls and ceilings), endeavoring to get out through the same passages that had let me in. I had already tried to descend what I now supposed to be the Scala Santa, but had been turned back by a sentinel. After wandering to and fro a good while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, on each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, on slabs of marble, built into the walls; and classic altars and tablets were ranged along, from end to end. At the extremity was a closed iron grating, from which I was retreating; but a French gentleman accosted me, with the information that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling down upon individual objects.